Policy learning and democracy aid in the EU’s Southern Neighbourhood

Abstract The EU has continued to use aid to support democracy in its Southern Neighbourhood, despite deepening authoritarianism in the region since the Arab Uprisings. The democracy narrative remains prominent in EU policy documents and the EU has continued to fund democracy programmes in Southern Neighbourhood countries. This raises the questions of what EU policymakers have learned about democracy aid, and why they consider it worthwhile to continue financing democracy support even as aid has become more securitised. We adapt the policy learning framework developed in this special issue to outline who learns, how they learn and manage knowledge, and how that knowledge is translated into decision-making on EU democracy aid. Empirically, we discuss what the EU has learned from research, reports and evaluations on democracy aid, and we analyse data from the OECD-DAC on EU democracy support to Southern Neighbourhood countries. We argue that policy learning contributed to a pattern of ‘successful failure’, enabling the EU to sustain and adapt democracy aid despite its limited success in promoting democratic change. This is evident in a marked shift in emphasis from direct, ‘political’ democracy aid to indirect, ‘developmental’ democracy aid.